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Tank (game term)
A tank is a character whose primary role is to absorb damage for the rest of the group and prevent others from being attacked, most often a Warrior, Paladin or Druid. A tank is a "meatshield", so to speak, intercepting incoming mobs with their persons. Using both the DPS from their massive weapons/spells and/or their innate taunting abilities, the tank assumes the aggro of the mobs and tries to keep them off other group mates. With everyone targeting and assisting the tank to kill one mob at a time, the mobs go down faster and there is less damage done to the group, depending upon the add situation at any given moment. Because of the constant abuse upon their armor and weapons, it is incumbent upon a tank to keep their gear in tip-top repair. While this is expensive for them, mobs drop many serviceable items and there is the Auction House where one can purchase decent equipment appropriate for one's level. The tank is also sometimes referred to as MT (Main Tank) and should not be confused with the MA (Main Assist). Also used to contrast from a Nuker or a Healer. Primary Tank Classes Druid Druids get Bear Form at level 10, and upgrade this to Dire Bear Form at level 40. These forms function in much the same way as a warrior does featuring enhanced damage mitigation and threat generation. Decently equipped Bear tanks feature the highest armor and hit point values of any class in the game. This mitigation along with taunts, the innate 30% threat generated from Bear Form (similar to a warrior in Defensive Stance) and high threat abilities like Maul all combine to make Druids suitable tanks for almost any encounter in the game. For certain encounters (e.g. Jin'do) Druid tanks may be preferred due to their Feral Charge and/or immunity to Polymorph. Bears can also be called upon to tank in situations where the mobs frequently make use of mind control type spells, because bears are not humanoid and therefor are immune to mind control. In addition to Bear tanks some Balance Druids in Moonkin Form can be called on to off-tank elites or swarms of non-elites with their increased armor. In general, feral druids are the best tanks until end game because virtually no warriors spec protection while levelling up and a feral druid is much better at tanking than an arms warrior, and because the higher ability of feral druids to generate aggro enables them to more easily tolerate the lack of aggro control from unexperienced players. Paladin The Paladin is the Tank/Healer hybrid to the Warrior's Tank/DPS. Paladins can wear the same armor types as the Warrior, i.e. mail until level 40 and plate thereafter, and are the best multi-target tank, with abilities such as Consecration (a DoT AoE spell that causes a high amount of aggro to all mobs within the affected area), and with Talent Points in the Protection tree, Redoubt, Reckoning (both more effective the more enemies attacking the Paladin), Holy Shield, and Avenger's Shield, enabling them to keep high amounts of mobs on them with far less trouble than a Warrior or Druid. Though they do have with much less HP and armour than a Bear Form Druid, and less damage mitigation than a Warrior vs. a single mob. Paladins also have a selection of Auras, buffs, heals, and a resurrect spell. *Righteous Defense helps regain aggro from allies. *Righteous Fury increases the threat generated by their Holy spells by 60% (90% with Improved Righteous Fury). *Spiritual Attunement prevents the Paladin from running out of mana. *Blessing of Salvation can decrease threat caused by other party members. *Judgement of Justice prevents runners. Warrior Warriors with the tanking builds and gear are the best all-purpose tank in the game. While warriors can tank with any talent spec and in all stances, the "Protection" tree is geared towards the tanking role, as is the Warrior's Defensive Stance and these are generally favorable to have in a tank in endgame environments. Warriors have the most tools of any class for tanking, from their offensive, threat generating tools such as Revenge, Sunder Armor and multiple taunts to their many mitigation abilities starting with the ability to wear the best armor and use shields, continuing with defensive stance, Berserker Rage and emergency buttons like Shield Wall and Last Stand. Secondary Tank Classes Hunter As noted, Hunters can use their pets to draw aggro from less durable classes if needed. Hunters can also use the Distracting Shot ability to pull a mob off another player; Aimed Shot can also draw aggro because of its high damage. In their early careers, at least, Hunters are leather wearers, so they aren't as durable as a Paladin or Warrior in the tank role and should allow a better tanker to take over once the danger has passed to the group's cloth wearers. Hunters can learn to wear mail at level 40, which will give them more staying power in the off-tank role. Post level 40, a mail-wearing Survivalist with sufficiently high Stamina will serve well enough as a makeshift tank in any original game instance before Blackrock Depths, (including the Sunken Temple) but after that point, they are no longer really viable. Holding aggro is a serious problem, since Growl does not always work particularly well, and Distracting Shot is about a Hunter's only other option. It should be emphasised that although emergency flash tanking for wipe prevention can be a key element of the Survivalist role, such tanking can only be viably performed on an extremely temporary basis. Deterrence can be used to boost damage mitigation by 25%, however this ability only lasts for 10 seconds. Survivalist melee should be employed as part of a hybrid strategy which incorporates at least equal, and probably preferably greater, amounts of ranged combat. Attempting to rely primarily or exclusively on melee for extended periods can result in a dead Hunter. In any scenario where a Hunter is called on to tank or offtank, their low damage mitigation makes a fast healer essential. Shaman The shaman excels in one half of tanking - aggro generation (the other half is damage mitigation). A Shaman can tank decently using the Frost Shock spell and high damage attacks. Frost Shock generates more aggro for its damage than most spells. Lightning Shield can also increase the Shaman's DPS to draw more aggro. However the damage mitigation of Shamans is considerably worse than other 'tanking' classes because they are limited to mail armor (plus a shield) and do not have any damage mitigation abilities. Shamans CAN spec for parry and increased defense, which will help avoid incoming damage. If acting as a secondary healer, a Shaman is in a good position to pull aggro from cloth wearers who have drawn aggro from nuking or healing. Their relative fragility, however, means that ideally they should probably avoid melee combat entirely if it is at all possible. Minions as Tanks Hunter Minions Hunters can have an assortment of beasts as pets, and they can serve as secondary tanks, also known as off tanks. Some pet abilities like growl can help a pet draw the aggro off of mobs. This can be useful to draw mobs off cloth-wearing teammates such as Priests or to enable the hunter to maintain sufficient distance from the mobs to used ranged attacks. Pets with low health can also use the cower ability, which reduces threat, to shed aggro if needed; this sometimes makes life easier for Warriors. A hunter can have a pet growl to draw aggro when the main tank is in trouble, then cower let the MT return to duty after recovering. When not on duty as backup tanks, pets can attack the primary target of the group to hasten its demise. Also it should be noted that when a hunter's pet is being used to dps a target, but not tank, both growl and cower should be disabled. Growl should be disabled to prevent the hunter pet from accidentally stealing aggro from the tank (which usually annoys and embarrasses the tank). Cower should be disabled because it wastes the pet's focus, which could be used in favor other pet abilities which do more damage, such as Bite or Claw. The most popular pets for Tanking duties are Bears, Boars, and Turtles such as Kresh. Boars and Turtles are especially good tank pets because they have higher armor and health than most other pets, and because of their special species-only abilities such as Charge (boars) and Shell Shield (turtles.) Bears also make good all around tanks because of their high health / medium armor but do not currently have any bear-specific abilities. Boars are also popular due to the fact that they will eat almost any type of food. Pets such as Cats or Owls are more popular for extra damage dealing ("DPS") but can't take a pounding quite as well as a tank pet. Many hunters will keep two "permanent" pets in their two stable slots -- a tank pet and a damage pet (or sometimes a PvE pet and a PvP pet, which are often the same as a tank pet and a DPS pet.) The two stable slots are used to hold the permanent pets while taming "temporary" pets in order to learn new skills from pets in the wild. Pets that can use Screech: Bats, Carrion Birds, and Owls, can function as makeshift tanks due to the substantial AoE threat it generates, but this is not very effective and should be used only in low-risk situations; they require significant amounts of healing to do so. Warlock Minions The voidwalker, one of the many minions available to the warlock class, is designed to hold aggro on one mob while that mob gets killed by damage spells from the warlock and / or other damage dealers in the warlock's group. The voidwalker has special spells which use its own mana to generate threat. Support classes should always remember to heal and buff this valuable sub tank. If you have the voidwalker switch targets it may hold aggro for multiple mobs at one time, but only for a short time unless the damage against the mobs being tanked is about equal to and not too much higher than the threat being generated by the voidwalker itself. Success is not guaranteed and requires a lot more attention, but sometimes this is better than nothing. Although the voidwalker lacks a true Taunting ability, it does have two abilities which generate high amounts of threat and thus can be used to hold aggro: Torment, which generates threat against a single target; and Suffering, which generates threat against all enemy targets within 10 yards of the voidwalker. Be warned that Suffering has a relatively long cooldown and can be resisted. Raid tanking The three endgame raid tank classes (Paladin, Warrior, Druid) all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are four important topics for different boss encounters: crushing blows, damage reduction, aggro, and health. Every tanking class has a pronounced advantage in at least one of these in comparison to the two other tanking classes. Note that for some raid boss fights (e.g. Vek'lor or High King Maulgar) non-traditional classes and specs will find themselves called into tanking duty. These topics are: *Crushing blows (every boss has a 15% chance to hit you for 50% more damage above an ordinary hit) *Damage reduction (through armor) *Aggro (compare threat generation over a long fight and fast threat generation at an aggro reset for example) *Health (health is complex to manage, especially when regarding all other tank stats) To being immune against crushing blows, you have to move out them from the Attack table. To do so, the sum of Block, Parry, Dodge, Miss (not shown in character window, its 0.04% for each Defense value over 365) for you on bosses has to be 102.5%. To reach these stats, warriors may use Shield Block and paladins may use Holy Shield and the proc of Redoubt; druids can not reach these stats, they have to balance that out with a high armor value. Damage reduction (through armor) is, besides health, the main druid tank stat. Aggro is an important tank characteristic; being able to develop more aggro than DPS and healers is definitely a must. Furthermore, you must maintain a higher level of threat for the duration of the fight and be able to pick it up quickly if you lose it. Health - the more you have of it, the longer you can last. Druids have the most health innately of all tanks; warriors have medium amounts of health; and paladins must basically out-gear the other two tank classes because they start out with the lowest amount of base health. Note: For every tank who tanks bosses and mobs above level 73, the first law is to reach critical hit immunity against these. Druids (with the Feral talent Suvival of the Fittest) reach it with 415 defense; paladins and warriors with 490 defense. References *Tank Spot *www.tankhard.com Category:Game Terms Category:Partying Category:Tactics